Employee recognition is moving beyond high-fives and gift cards. Achievers, a widely used recognition and rewards platform, just tightened its ties with Workday through the Built on Workday program—and the centerpiece is a new app designed to gamify workforce upskilling.
The “Learn & Recognize” app blends Workday Learning with Achievers’ social recognition tools, letting HR leaders spot skills gaps, reward employees for training progress, and push courses directly into the company’s recognition feed. In other words, learning isn’t just mandatory—it’s incentivized.
Recognition Meets Skills Development
The pitch is simple: companies say they want internal mobility, but the data shows otherwise. Achievers’ Workforce Institute reports that only 24% of employees feel their companies have strong internal mobility programs, and half of HR leaders admit they can’t easily identify who has (or lacks) priority skills.
The Learn & Recognize app attacks that problem with a three-pronged approach:
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Incentivize learning: Workers earn points and achievements for completing Workday Learning modules.
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Drive visibility: HR leaders can promote courses in Achievers’ newsfeed to raise awareness.
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Boost adoption: The Achievers Communication Suite nudges employees to sign up for and complete courses.
Sarah Callery, Global VP of Alliances at Achievers, framed the move as a natural evolution: “Isolated systems deliver less value. By merging recognition with Workday Learning, we’re creating a more impactful experience that builds skills while driving engagement.”
Why This Matters in HR Tech
The skills conversation isn’t new, but it’s getting louder. As automation reshapes jobs, companies need systems that not only track what employees know but also motivate them to keep learning. The trick has always been engagement: compliance-driven training rarely sticks. By linking learning to recognition—public shoutouts, community engagement, and yes, rewards—Achievers is betting it can make skill-building more sticky.
Competitors like Degreed and EdCast have also pushed to connect learning with engagement, but Achievers brings an advantage: it’s already embedded in many workplaces as the go-to platform for recognition and rewards. Adding a skills layer could transform it from “nice-to-have perk” into a critical talent management tool.
Beyond Badges and Points
Bob Memmer, CRO at Achievers, called this “a new era of our partnership” with Workday, stressing that the focus isn’t just gamification but real-time skills intelligence. By capturing data on which courses employees complete—and tying that to recognition—HR leaders get a live feed of workforce capabilities. That’s fuel for smarter staffing, internal mobility, and succession planning.
A Broader HR Stack Play
This move also highlights a bigger trend: HR tech vendors are racing to become more deeply integrated across the stack. For Achievers, going beyond recognition into skills development means a stronger foothold in performance management and talent strategy—areas traditionally dominated by Workday itself, along with rivals like SuccessFactors and Cornerstone.
The app is now available in the Workday Marketplace, alongside other Built on Workday offerings. And while the “earn points for learning” angle might sound like a gimmick, it taps into a proven truth: people like recognition. If Achievers can channel that into measurable upskilling, it could give HR leaders something they’ve long struggled to achieve—momentum.
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